Staying on Top When Your World's Upside Down

Create something knowing there are no guarantees

“What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. It is a harsh fact that the things you build may be destroyed during your lifetime. You may lose them overnight. Even if they last beyond your lifetime, they will eventually be lost. Still, they are worth building. The act of building brings joy and satisfaction.”Kent Keith: Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments

With very few exceptions, no one has ever started a business with an ironclad guarantee that it would make them rich, no one has ever penned a first novel knowing it would hit the bestseller lists, no one has ever gone to graduate school with absolute certainty that it would pay off in their career, and no one has ever conceived a child secure in the knowledge that he or she would be born healthy and go on to be a straight-A student who never talked back or violated curfew. When it comes to the things that really matter in life, there are precious few guarantees.

But as Keith says, that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth creating. In fact, the bigger and more magnificent the dream, the less likely it will be to come with a guarantee.